This country could use a little more irrationality — provided it’s channeled into appropriate places. Many of us likely recoil from such a pronouncement. Since grade school, we’ve been taught the virtues of the Enlightenment, how reason and rationality conquered superstition and backwardness. For those who accept what Thomas Sowell aptly labels the “unconstrained” vision of the world, it may indeed be unnecessary to celebrate irrationality. But those who sagely embrace the constrained vision realize perpetual rationality is impossible. Moreover, not only is it infeasible to apply pure reason to each detail in one’s life, even attempting to do so is a dangerous goal. It would be mentally exhausting. Perhaps it would be better to identify the areas of life where rationality is most warranted, such as politics, and allow custom and habit to govern the rest.
This counterintuitive idea arose due to George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan’s book, “The Myth of the Rational Voter.” Political scientists have long known of the public’s general ignorance of objective political knowledge — the economist Anthony Downs famously coined the phrase rational ignorance to explain the phenomenon — but Caplan persuasively builds on Downs’ argument. Politics — more specifically, individual political beliefs — are influenced much more heavily by irrational preferences than we’d like to believe. This is troubling, for politics is the area of life where we most ought to dispel superstitions and cognitive biases. But Caplan’s findings are unsurprising given the demands of rationality.
Rationality requires constantly evaluating new information and adopting one’s views based on these new developments. Not only is this exhausting, it’s costly to any individual’s psychological well-being. Many of our beliefs become central to our identities — we cherish them and loathe seeing them challenged or refuted.
To take one example, I am an avid New England Patriots fan. I believe Brady is the greatest athlete of all time, but of course, I want to believe that. When I consider the arguments it’s inevitable I do so in a biased manner because my fandom constitutes part of my identity. Fundamental challenges to one’s identity impose psychic costs, so it’s natural to avoid applying strict rationality when evaluating information which can potentially cripple an aspect of your cherished worldview.
Perhaps a better example is religion. Religions are not purely rational beliefs. Rationality can influence whether we believe in a higher power, but generally we don’t reason our way into believing every aspect of organized religions — rather, we have faith in them. Religion is also central to one’s identity, and thus resistant to arguments which challenge their core tenets. It is a rare religious believer who relishes being told his belief system is a nonsensical pack of lies.
The problem, as Caplan put it, is that “once you admit that preferences over beliefs are relevant in religion, it is hard to compartmentalize the insight.” In other words, it’s not just in my Patriots’ fandom and Catholicism where I eschew the cold, calculating logic of reason in favor of mysticism to suit my psychological preferences. If my political worldview is also central to my identity, I am likely irrational about that too. And this of course is the problem today. As the historian Paul Johnson noted a few decades ago, “The history of modern times is in great part the history of how that vacuum [left by the decline of religion] had been filled … In place of religious belief, there would be secular ideology.”
Political matters should involve a robust debate over relevant facts and normative judgments, irrespective of who puts forth which ideas. Yet this isn’t the case today. In Caplan’s words, “Like the adherents of traditional religion, many people find comfort in their political worldview, and greet critical questions with pious hostility.” When politics become central to our identity — when we identify too strongly with a certain party or ideological group — we naturally become more inclined to shelter our worldview than welcome new arguments. We become fans of our political team, or adherents of our political religion, rather than informed citizen-voters seeking the best ideas.
We are not a society of Vulcans, capable of casting out all emotions in favor of pure reason. Once we accept some irrationality is an inevitability for humans, the relevant question becomes which aspects of our lives we allow our emotions to govern. These should be relatively benign beliefs which don’t impose costs on others — insisting upon Belichick’s genius or the University’s superiority while discounting any evidence to the contrary, for example. The hope is that by embracing a form of mysticism and affiliation towards harmless ideas, we can avoid forming too close an attachment to areas of life where loyalty to a worldview should yield to rational inquiry free of cognitive biases and emotional attachments. In other words, politics should cease being the religion of modern times. It may just take the revival of irrationality in other spheres of life to get us there.
Matt Winesett is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
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